Stephen Colbert Is Having None of This Jared Kushner “Government Innovation” Nonsense

He’s got some very good ideas about where Kushner and company can start.

Jared Kushner, the senior White House adviser whose principal qualification for his position is that he married the president’s favorite daughter once upon a time, will head a “SWAT team of strategic consultants” tasked with searching out and destroying inefficiencies in the federal government. In their wildest dreams, your average business-school graduate fluent in tech-bro buzzwords couldn’t imagine a position this desirable, and yet Jared Kushner has it locked up at the tender age of 36, proving once again that in America, as long as you come from a wealthy family, marry into another wealthy family, and rebrand your management-consulting outfit as an "incubator of sleek transformation," anything is possible.

This plan is, of course, as misguided in its conception as it is incompetent in its execution, and Stephen Colbert is having even less of this brand of Trump nonsense than usual. The Late Show host, after complimenting Kushner for at least having the good sense not to name his team the "Bureau of Obvious Nepotism," took issue in particular with Kushner stating that he hopes to "achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens.” Uh, not so much, says Colbert.

Hold it a second. We're not customers. We're citizens, which means we
own the store. You work for us, buddy.

If the idea of entrusting complicated decisions about the inner workings of the federal government, an entity that is orders of magnitude larger than any corporation and has fundamentally different institutional goals, to a Suicide Squad of corporatespeak-spouting, Soylent-pounding technocrats strikes fear into your heart, don't worry. As Colbert points out, there is at least one obvious issue to which they should be able to turn their prodigious font-selection skills immediately.

The government desperately needs overhaul. I mean, somebody keeps
putting totally unqualified people in charge of really important
stuff!